After
by ShaeLynn
Summary: After the final battle, how does one survive? Something to continue living for is a good place to start. Songfic. Slash. Don't like, don't read. Constructive criticism welcome. Flames are fuel for future fics. revised


Title: After  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own, wish I did, but I don't. Also the song is not mine, just rather fitting. It is on the soundtrack to the musical Les Miserables.  
  
Author: ShaeLynn Teelle First posted fic; flames will be fed to the dragon in my bed.  
  
Warning: Implied slash/yaoi/guys with guys. Past character deaths. Talk of death and implied prostitution, nothing more.  
  
Summary: After the final battle, how does one survive? Something to continue living for is a good place to start.  
  
Empty silver eyes looked out from the stone windowpane. The landscape that the view offered was cold and brown. The scars of winter showing before the spring could heal and hide the scars for another year.  
  
'But there are some scars that can neither be healed not concealed,' the young man thought to himself.  
  
A chill breeze blew through his pale blonde hair. He had taken to leaving the fine strands fall free about his face and though it had never been allowed to reach beyond the top of his shoulders, many people thought him to be his father. Few people knew that his father had been dead for several days, killed by the hand of his own son. But these thoughts were not what had caused the young man to seek solitude away from the masses in the Great Hall.  
  
No, the thoughts in his head centered on the three newest casualties that were found the day before. Just beyond the edge of the forbidden forest the bodies of three teenagers, two male, one female, were found. There was nothing to immediately identify the bodies from all the curses and hexes that were cast on them, even their teeth had been ripped out at one point. The only thing to really distinguish the teens was the Dark Mark burned on their left forearms and the green and silver ties that had been used to strangle all three. The Headmaster had asked him to come down that morning in case he might know who they were when living and what side they were on.  
  
"Gregory Goyle, Vincent Crabbe, and that one's Pansy Parkinson."  
  
"How are you so sure?" the Aurors that had discovered the bodies asked cautiously, none of them ready to trust or believe the ex-Death Eater.  
  
"Because I knew them and they only followed Voldemort because their father's would have killed them had they refused, just as mine would have. They gathered information for me on the movements of the lower ranks. They died for that when I was discovered.  
  
"Gregory got this scar," he pointed to a six-inch scar the length of the corpse's left bicep, "When he let an agent of the light escape. He needed something to explain why he hadn't been able to stop the prisoner and Voldemort refused to let magic heal it as part of his punishment. Vincent got this tattoo a month before he was forced to take the Dark Mark. If you look with a magnifying spell, you will find the names Harry, Hermione, and Ronald spelled upside down and backwards. The only way he knew of to show his loyalty to the light, even if it was nearly impossible to see. I was with him at the time he got it at a muggle tattoo parlor so Voldemort couldn't use his magic to see what it was." He had knelt down and pointed to a tattoo that wrapped about the inside anklebone of the body's right foot, so thin it was barely visible.  
  
"Voldemort turned Pansy into a whore meant to keep the Death Eaters with no wives happy. Some of you may have noticed that none of the bodies on the battlefield were female. Voldemort didn't believe many women had what it took to become a full-fledged Death Eater. They had to work their way up. Every woman that bears the Dark Mark also bears another mark. He marked them all with a brand on the upper inner thigh. It's a small 'V' with a coiled serpent above it. Pansy was the only one alive during the last month that had not received the Dark Mark or died. She used her position to get those with loose tongues to babble about Voldemort's plans while they bedded her."  
  
He did not point out this mark on the woman's body. It was the Aurors that checked for the distinguishing mark and found it exactly where he had told them it was. Madam Pomfrey had already confirmed that the Dark Mark on the woman's arm had been placed there only moments before her death, though the time of death was impossible to determine due to several curses that had been cast on all three bodies.  
  
Afterwards he had retreated back to his lonely room halfway up one of the many empty towers that graced the stone castle, the same room that he now stood in. The tower room held only two small beds, a bare desk, and a couple of battered school trunks that had seen far better days. He needed nothing beyond the items in the room where he had lived ever since he had been revealed to Voldemort as a traitor. But he WANTED so much more.  
  
He wanted those that had given their lives to take their lives back and come greet him before living their lives as they should. He wanted the three friends that sacrificed their lives helping him help the light to be standing beside him. Instead he now watched them from a distance as their caskets were lowered into the ground next to the graves of Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley. On the other side of them was Severus Snape's final resting place. The Gryffindors never knew how much they really meant to the Slytherin Professor, but he had often confided in his favorite Slytherin student how much he admired them when they had done something to surprise or greatly please him. He took points and gave detentions to see how far they could handle the criticism. The Professor never let anyone but his prize pupil and Minerva McGonagall know his motivations. She was buried next to him. The Heads of rivals houses, but in secret, friends that played their public roles to perfection.  
  
Beyond them, more students, Professors new and old, Aurors, parents, children, friends. The lines of headstones ran a quarter of the way around the lake, three plots deep, and growing. The headstones themselves became a lasting memorial to those that lost their lives. Their names were engraved along with their birth and found dates. Some had been found days after the final battle and, like the three Slytherins, it was impossible to know when they had died from the curses and hexes used. In the center of each headstone was a square of pure white stone. Much like a muggle film in a series of flashbacks, the most treasured memories of each person that died for the light played over and over, never ending. It was a tribute to the lively people they had once been.  
  
He had managed to walk down amongst the stones a week before, at night when no one would really know. He had meant to watch the memories of all those he knew or had heard of; Hermione Granger, Ronald Weasley, Ginny Weasley, Charlie Weasley, Neville Longbottom and his parents, the rest of his fellow classmates from any of his years in school, McGonagall, Snape, Flitwick, Trelawny, and Hagrid among countless others that gave their lives for the side against Voldemort.  
  
But he hadn't been able to get past the third Gryffindor's headstone. One of Ginny's favorite memories had been of the day he had saved her life. She had been distracted and depressed when the moving staircase she was on decided to move and nearly threw her off the edge. He had thankfully been there and grabbed her arm just as she started to fall and pulled her back onto the landing, nearly causing himself to fall over the edge with her.  
  
There was no sound from these memories so all you could see was his lips moving after his rescue of the red headed girl, then, he brushed his lips across the knuckles of the hand he still held and walked away. He remembered the works he had spoken as though it was the same instant instead of nearly four years later. Into the quiet night air he had mumbled the words as he watched himself say them, 'Distracting yourself now is a good way to get killed. Never let your guard drop, Ginny. Harry will need all your help for the final battle.'  
  
And he'd been right. Ginny had been killed watching Harry's back from halfway across the battlefield. She had let her attention be taken by the Death Eater that had snuck up behind Harry with a knife after his wand broke. She had stopped that Death Eater, but the one that was right behind her wasn't interrupted. He had not been able to save her a second time.  
  
After seeing that memory he had fled back to his room and carefully climbed into one of the small beds, trying not to awaken the other occupant who had merely turned over and draped his arm over the other's side, spooning up behind him.  
  
That had been the first night that he'd allowed tears to come and they were only shed for those that had died, but had seen his true self before the final battle started; Ginny, Severus, Minerva, Remus Lupin, Ron, and Hermione, though the last three hadn't known about it until long after it had happened.  
  
Now, watching the Headmaster create the magical headstones, he waved his wand, his force of will channeling his magic better than any words he could have spoken, just as Dumbledore was doing to create the headstones. Three songs were added to the headstones, one for each of his closest friends that had given everything for him. The songs were barely audible to any human, but they would be heard at night by any near them when the stillness quieted everything but the music. It was the only thing he could do for them and the memories that wouldn't be shown on the white squares.  
  
He hadn't even noticed the tears that had begun to course down his cheeks until he felt a gentle hand brush one away. He looked up, startled silver eyes meeting green ones that were far too old for the twenty-year- old that they belonged to. The other man waved his wand and a song began to play upon the breeze that blew about the castle and the two found themselves wrapped in each other's arms as they remembered the friends that had given their lives.  
  
There's a grief that can't be spoken  
There's a pain goes on and on  
Empty chairs at empty tables  
Now my friends are dead and gone.  
Here they talked of revolution  
Here it was they lit the flame  
Here they sang about 'tomorrow'  
And tomorrow never came.  
From the table in the corner  
They could see a world reborn  
And they rose with voices ringing  
I can hear them now  
The very words that they had sung  
Became their last communion  
On a lonely barricade at dawn!  
Oh my friends, my friends, forgive me  
That I live and you are gone  
There's a grief that can't be spoken  
There's a pain goes on and on.  
Phantom faces at the windows  
Phantom shadows on the floor  
Empty chairs at empty tables  
Where my friends will meet no more.  
Oh my friends, my friends, don't ask me  
What your sacrifice was for  
Empty chairs at empty tables  
Where my friends will sing no more.  
  
As the last line faded away, the two men could feel small arms wrapped about their legs and they bent to pick up the two red headed children that had tears running down their faces. Remus Lupin looked on as the two ex-enemies soothed and cradled the next generation of Weasleys. The picture before him reminded him that no matter what happens, life goes on and there will always be someone to comfort those left behind. 


End file.
